[90 Spoilers] Saxony's splendour and Miguelusten's glory

[Miguelito]

It's turn 47, and so much is happening!



The capital popped borders a bit before everybody else's courtesy of the terrace, and we can see a bit more of the land to our north. Rather unexciting, and I'd stay with the proposed x for city 4. We can plant another city further west later on, if it seems profitable. The new sights go against my suspicion of the other landmassesbeing tiny islands as well, however still no barbs have been seen.
Also visible, on turn 47 we eventually improve our capital's wet corn  . With that even the demos look less terrible:


The capital will use the quechua overflow and all the good tiles to bring the settler to 40/100 next turn, then finish growing to 4. My tendency right now is to wait until t49 to decide whether to get the settler asap or delay a turn, and make it dependent on whether Hinduism falls. Delaying has a bunch more commerce, and we could finish Poly a turn earlier. Still hard to believe that we'd get a plausible shot with an eta 54 55.

[Miguelito]

Today's personal first: messing up micro due to playing sick. Should have asked you to play Rusten. I whipped the settler a turn too early, so we miss out on some yields and pay a turn of extra maintenance (oh wait I can just finish him next turn, great ). Pretty bad, but probably not super bad.

We also got an event:


Lovely.

[Miguelito]

Tremendous excitement, as we're setting sails, finally:



 
there is copper on the map!

I say we very much settle on top. We still only have one worker who is supposed to spend the next 8 turns chopping out two terraces. The copper plant speeds up the third city terrace, making it so we don't have to set avoid growth, great . Also undisturbed availability of axes and hill plant both seem very important for the barb avalanche that awaits us at some point.
On that point, the wolf confirms that the landmass can bear barbs, hopefully it remains at just doggos for the while being. There's a bear visible on the northern landmass this turn as well. Landing a Quechua next to a bear would suck.




As does paying 3 gpt in unit maintenance . One of the reasons why the new city will bring in a direct bonus to our finances, despite generating immediate costs of >4 gpt. Actually, with ICTR and Fin fish it is quite profitable from the get go.



Meanwhile back home next turn I fear we will have to do the unspeakable and leave the fur unworked for a turn, in order to fast track the capital's growth . Otherwise we just senselessly pump food into Meißen without a terrace (we will already need to avoid growth for a turn). My blunder and the bad event really messed things up .
I have to run numbers though to see if doing so delays our anyhow far fetched Hindu attempt.

[Rusten]

Yeah, settling on copper seems the best play.

[Miguelito]

I'll be damned, looks like I royally screwed up Hindu as well. On turn 55 we'll end the turn with 4 gold left, and 3.2 beakers short . If it comes to it, we can debate working coast over food in order to secure the coinflip .

[Miguelito]

argh.



Vodka gives us 50%. I like to gamble, but the iron rule is that these are always losses, so I kept the settler on the boat and loaded up the second quechua (and pulled the third from the city such that he can upload next turn if needed).
I also decided to leave the fur unworked for 2 turns even. In the long run it costs just 1h/1c per turn, since the cottage loses a future coin for every turn that it isn't worked. Does that make sense?
My Polytheism eta had a silly error anyways, so we were already not making it for eot 55; all due to my ill-advised whip and the event on top. Tissues ready for when it falls on that turn.

[RefSteel]

[EDIT: I am apparently blind and failed to see the wolf, and therefore said mistaken things about the odds. Here's hoping the Q survives and gets a promo though!]

[Miguelito]

[EDIT:  I am apparently blind and failed to see the wolf, and therefore said mistaken things about the odds.  Here's hoping the Q survives and gets a promo though!]

The Quechua appreciates your encouragement, and I can report that he indeed did survive, although he did not get a promotion:


I did not expect that

In other fun news, Plemo(!) (Asoka!!) oracled freaking Code of Laws!!! He also had his 3rd city down t50, which is 3 turns earlier than the fastest we could have done. Need to get that dogpile going.

Meanwhile Piccadilly (Wang Kon) is up to 4 cities. Either the other Fin leaders (and Org India ) had a much lesser nerf to their starts, or those guys are performing super impressive openings (while we are playing a Pottery first variant). Or both. I feel like we are at least ten turns away yet from a 4th city. Anyways, Oracle should really have gone to someone like Brennus, Monty or Ramesses. Org India being able to snatch it on turn 54 with Writing researched seems quite dubious.

For the record, considering that our main disadvantage is making the whip available really late: While we whipped 2+1 pop on turn 50, Plemo whipped twice for 2pop (t37/47), and Piccadilly only once for 2pop as well (t42). I'm really curious how they lead us well in excess of 100h already (more like 200 probably - well I guess 2 fast workers chopping? But still, to even have as many forests...), while apparently at least Plemo also has a tech edge.
I would say nothing if these were some leaders from the Monty/CdG/Genghis group, who are supposed to have an early edge by map design to make up for their worse late game. But I would expect for Wang Kon to have an only slightly better start than us, and for Asoka to be on a similar level.
Looking forward in awe to read on their masterful starts (no bitching here) after the game.

[AdrienIer]

The last few paragraphs are great news, if things go wrong you can always blame the mapmaker now.

[Miguelito]

The last few paragraphs are great news, if things go wrong you can always blame the mapmaker now.

Yes, I am very pleased with myself that I already managed to blame purely hypothetical mapmaker errors for our so far also still mostly hypothetical loss



We finally, gladly, get up our third city. What is going to happen to that lion? Just going to stay there until a quechua is feeling lucky? 
The worker gets ferried over by turn 57, in orderto chop the terrace in time for the whip.

As you see I also have made sort of a plan to drop an axe/settler pair on the northern hill on turn 62. I don't love it; the 40 hammers into the settler being the bottleneck means that 13 of those have to come from food, which of course is a poor use of our terraces. The ideal way would be to grow Meißen to size 4 and whip the axe for 2 pop, overflowing into a galley. But that will take like 2-4 turns longer. Or maybe just one?

Meißen food: 4 (t55)+4+4+7+7 = size 4 on t60.
Dresden foodhammers: 9 (t56) + 9 + 5 + 5 + 13 +6+7+9 -> settler whippable t61. Food deficit of -2 on the two turns not working food.  

That feels better. In any case I left that option open until next turn (by not putting the 6 OF hammers into an axe this turn), but we'll have to decide then.
Rushing that city also means founding city 4 with just one worker empire wide, but we should do that for the meme value alone, and with Fin coast it is justifiable, somehow, I hope.

With overseas trade we actually get a top position for once:


Don't anybody look past the first row!
Going by the original plan we were finishing Polytheism this turn and would have had our shot at Hinduism, which incredibly is still available. My micro fluke when sick, the bad event and the animals preventing us from settling last turn delayed that for a turn. I'm steeling myself to be able to bear with the disappointment.